It’s been a while and we are in the middle of 5 months of fun

Oh, hello blog.  No, I did not forget you.  I would like to tell you I have been busy but I hate the “busy” excuse.  Instead, I have made the mental choice every day to either have a glass of wine, workout or even take a nap instead of coming to write.

Don’t think I haven’t wanted to though.

I do.  Often.

I lie in bed at night and “blog” in my head.  I will write out full posts because it is how I can decompress.

All that leads us to here, where I’m about to write a rambling post to get not only you caught up but myself caught up.  Settle in.

The last time I was here we were getting rid of the swaddle and going through sleep regression.  Well, eventually Cora got used to not being swaddled. We also realized her other issue was a major cold that I eventually had to give in on and get her amoxicillin.  Have you had the joy of holding your child down to shove antibiotics down her throat?  You learn to do it when said child is naked and with nothing in a 3 ft perimeter that can be stained pink.  Good times not had by all. But she did start sleeping again (on her tummy like a starfish) once she could finally breathe through her nose.  And with a blanket.  I know, horrible parent right here.

Then I went back to work.  It was a roller coaster of what will I actually do and for how many days. At the final hour I ended up in a new office, with some friends in the business and only working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  I actually felt good about going back to work.  I can honestly say the three days is perfect for us.  While I still don’t love what I do, this is something that works for now and is better than where I was at for the past two years. A step in a better direction and I can say I felt incredibly blessed to spend 4 1/2 months at home with Cora.

The month leading up to going back to work, I was doing drop-in days at Cora’s daycare.  We spent months trying to find the best childcare.  In my former life I spent 8 years working in public childcare facilities and just couldn’t see us going that route.  So we looked and looked for a home daycare.  In a small town that is really tough.  The good ones are full, don’t take part-time or have a wait list.  Finally, we found a woman who decided to stay at home with her little one and start in home care.  She was previously a nurse and her husband is a police officer.  All the “practice” drop-in days were great.  Both Cora and I were able to slowly get used to what would be our new normal so when the real day came for me to go back to work I had zero anxiety about daycare.  So far she loves it there and we manage to get out the door every morning by 7am with our shit together. Plus coffee, all the coffee.

We made it through her 4 month old appointment where we were told once again that developmentally she is quite ahead of her game and the doctor was shocked by it all.  I don’t know what we are doing but apparently it is right and it feels good to be told you aren’t fucking up your kid…yet.  We got the okay to start some cereal with her as well.  Slowly but surely she has grown to love it but the main person she likes to feed her is Daddy.  She will eat bowl after bowl for him.  For me, she will zip those lips shut and grunt.

At 4 months old we had her baptized.  If you have been around for a while, you will know that this was a tough decision for us.  In the end, I’m glad we did it and I feel I fed the Catholic guilt demon in me.  During the baptism, Cora was in great spirits while putting on quite the show for the entire congregation and our family that was in attendance.  What followed can only best be described as a Friends episode.  You know, the one where Emma turns 1 and she takes the longest nap, while every waits for her, so they can start the party?  Yes, that.  We went home from the church where Cora decided a three hour nap was needed, even though everyone came to our house for a party and lunch.  Eventually everyone else gave in and left without getting to really see the lady of the hour.  The only two left standing, when she woke, were her God parents.

At 4 1/2 months old, I sat behind Cora while she sat up playing.  I leaned over for something and realized she wasn’t going anywhere but instead stayed upright.  And so began her love for sitting up, unassisted, to see the world.  That is, until her dog comes along and knocks her over.  Really, she just finds that hilarious.  She has been furiously trying to figure out how to crawl.  Butt in the air, knees tucked under, but arms waving like crazy does not create forward motion.

At 5 months old we gave her a cup to distract her from grabbing at ours.  I wasn’t sure how to go about this so we literally took her to Babies R Us and let her hold all the training cups to basically pick herself.  No research, no asking around, no fore thought really, just a random parenting decision and it worked.  She seemed to like the Nuk training cups the best so we bought two.  She loves them and is getting the hang of drinking out of them after her bowl of cereal each night. Or tossing it over the high chair for the dog.  Whatever keeps her entertained while we finish our dinner is fine.

This past weekend we made the decision to move her from the pack n play in  our room, to her crib in her own room.  (Mom and Dad are ready to quit playing the “how quiet can we have sex?” game.)  She normally naps in her own crib so I didn’t think it would be too bad.  Wrong. So wrong.  After 16 times of laying her down we gave up.  She could be dead asleep and once she was laid down she would roll over and stare us down.  Over and over we tried until she landed back in her pack n play.  Now she has decided that she won’t stick to her just twice a night waking’s.  She is punishing us and has decided once an hour would be great.  Just for a cuddle, followed by three attempts to lay her down.  What the hell happened?  Basically we went from quiet sex to no sex.  Joke is on us.  #parentingfail

And last but not least, Cora gained her first little cousin.  My brother had a healthy baby boy and now our little nuggets are only 4 months and 4 days apart.  Putting the two babes next to one another is so shocking.  Cora looks huge! I can honestly say, there is no part of me that is jealous of them being 4 months behind us.  I’m glad we are out of the “fresh from the vag” phase and in the “let me scream you the story of my people” phase.  So much more fun.

I will make it back here more often now that we are settled into our new phase of parenting.  It gets easier, for the most part, each week.  We like our new normal even though sometimes we fail at it, we learn from it.